Change laboratories between university and work in emergency medical care

Abstract

Change Laboratories are a methodology to deal with complex problems in society in order to both better understand these problems as well as to find potential solutions. They typically involve collaborative problem solving and solution seeking from practitioner’s perspectives, conducted in a series of successive, structured workshops informed by Activity Theory. The problem examined in this paper is the efficacy of mentoring of Emergency Medical Care students (paramedics) during periods of work placement. Feedback from students and lecturers suggests that student learning is often constrained or at least uneven. The problem is then examined in Change Laboratories from the perspective of university/work intermediaries, the clinical facilitators, who are key players in student preparation for work and work placement. The clinical facilitators identify communication between the university and workplaces as a crucial constraint to student learning under mentors, and formulate more advanced roles for themselves to enhance communication. The result of such enhancement, it is argued, is the potential for mutual development of both university and workplace knowledge and skills.